This 2019 photo provided by Guernsey's Auction House shows a walking cane that was owned by Titanic survivor Ella White. (Rafael Zegarra/AP)

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A Titanic survivor’s walking stick, with an electric light she used to signal for help from a lifeboat, is one of thousands of maritime items that will be up for auction in Rhode Island.

Guernsey’s auction house is holding the auction at the International Yacht Restoration School in Newport on July 19 and 20. Guernsey’s President Arlan Ettinger described Ella White’s cane as one of the most extraordinary items to have survived the sinking.

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“It’s a fabled object and Titanic enthusiasts have certainly heard of it,” he said. “Most didn’t know it has survived. The family didn’t do anything to promote it, so it’s a very exciting discovery.”

A walking cane that was owned by Titanic survivor Ella White. (Rafael Zegarra/AP)

The walking stick was consigned to Guernsey’s by the Williams family of Milford, Connecticut.

Brad Williams said his grandmother was White’s niece and cared for her affairs before she died in 1942 at the age of 85, then took possession of the walking stick. It was passed on to Williams’ mother, then to him.

Williams, a 59-year-old cane collector, kept it in an umbrella stand with about 35 other canes. He said he wants it to go to a home where it will be better displayed, and use the proceeds for his children. It’s obviously the most famous cane in the collection, he said.

“It’s family history so I do I have trepidation about parting with it, but I also have to pay for college,” said Williams, who runs a boat repair business in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

The pre-auction estimate is $300,000 to $500,000, though Ettinger said it’s very hard to predict what it might fetch because it’s such an unprecedented artifact. A violin played by the Titanic’s bandleader as the ship sank sold at auction in 2013 for about $1.7 million.

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On the night of April 14, 1912, the British liner RMS Titanic collided with an iceberg in the North Atlantic and began sinking. The ship went under two hours and 40 minutes later and more than 1,500 people died.

White appointed herself as a signalman for lifeboat 8, waving her walking stick about, according to Walter Lord’s Titanic book and investigative hearings held after the sinking.